Atomic Nerds

Somewhere on the endless expanse of open space between secret locations:

“Well, yeah. You and I don’t need to spend three grand on a scope yet until we can make full use of something from Leupold that costs half as much. It’s kinda different spending your own money, y’know? I mean he just goes in and the whole thing goes down like “Hi, I’m OldNFO* and I’m awesome.” “Holy shit, you are! Have this amazing rifle!”

*It sounded even funnier with his real name in, and I don’t know why. If you know the guy, you understand.

Ahh, Blogorado. The traditional time of year when LabRat and I gather up a few necessary supplies and hie off for the middle of nowhere, that being a vastly preferable alternative to civilization, the latter having cell phones galore, powerpoint, and a general excess of assholes, the former having good friends, good conversation, and, most relevant to our story, a joint with a really good breakfast menu.

Last year, day after day a mass of hungry, rambunctious, and very visibly armed bloggers descended daily on The Obligatory Cow Reference* for breakfast. While we represented a non-trivial increase in their daily turn-over for the run of the visit, they were a bit unprepared for a regularly scheduled mob scene. This year, with a bit of forewarning and a bit** of foresight, they had sense to stuff the lot of us off into a separate room, safely sequestered from the regulars. All was good, and many arteries were filled with delicious gravy.

Now in some parts of the world, the job of waiter or waitress is given as much cachet as being a full blown chef. Culinary schools in France, for example, require all students to spend time working the front of the house as well as the line, and being a good waiter is taken as seriously as any other part of the restaurant world. Unfortunately, our waitress on Sunday did not get this memo.

Now, I like to give people a break when the situation warrants it. A party of 20 or so, with roughly 25 different conversations running in parallel can be a bit daunting to jump in the middle of to find who wants biscuits and gravy and who wants their eggs scrambled and who wants tomato juice and so on. I would have had more sympathy had I not recognized this same girl from last year, but still, this situation was a bit outside normal operating parameters. No, the main problem with this situation was not her inability to juggle the juice, but in her signboard.

Sitting next to Matt, and his father JPG, shortly after our coffee was refilled, The Comment came from Matt.

“It’s driving me nuts. I’ve gotta fix it.”

No discussion was necessary. Everybody in the immediate circle nodded solemnly in agreement.

She was wearing a sign around her neck, proclaiming “Its my last day! Please tip generously!”

“Does anybody have a marker?”
“I’ve got a sharpie in my range bag, but that’s back at the hotel. I could be back before she gets the hash browns out, I bet.”
Breakfast conversations at Blogorado being highly fluid, Vine had picked up on the discussion and joined in.
“Marker? I’ve got one in the truck, and I can get to that a damn sight faster than you can get to the hotel and back.”

We all considered this for a moment.

“Do it.”

Vine nipped out, and returned within moments carrying a large, black, chisel-tip sharpie of unnecessary proportions.

“Who’s going to do it?”
“JPG and I are closer, but we’d be at an angle. Straight on may be the way to go.”
“You’ve got reach. We can distract her when she brings the oatmeal.”
“All right. Hand it here.”

We waited for our plates. And waited. And waited. And waited some more. We even got bored and tried to snag her as she brought out a fresh carafe of coffee, since the consumption of same was measured in gallons per minute, but our collective cries of “Miss?” “Waitress?” “Hey, airhead!” and so forth bounced off her like raisins off a canoe.

Finally we got her attention. She slid into an open space to stand between JPG and myself, directly across from Matt. Almost like we’d set up such a position in advance. JPG started in, nice and friendly. Well, he started that way.

“Tell me, miss, what are you going to do since today is your last here?”
“Oh! I’m going to college!”
If you’re familiar with the late 90s TV series “Daria“, just imagine Brittney’s voice here. Suffice to say her response raised more than one eyebrow. JPG, being possessed of age and cunning, kept his poker face.
“Well that’s excellent. Where are you going?”
“WTU!”
“And where is that?”
“Um, west Texas?”
“I mean what is the name of the school.”
“WTU!”
“Miss, I don’t think they’re going to let you in if you can’t say the full name of the institution.”

Our prey was growing wary at this point, and beginning to shy away from the table full of people demanding such unreasonable precision. Matt, using keen hunting instincts, realized that our opportunity was dwindling and sprang.

“Miss,” he inquired, causing her to turn a few degrees towards him, presenting the sign straight on. He continued, “Miss, just one thing,” and began unfolding himself across the table. Now to put this in proper reference, our waitress was maybe four foot ten in her good heels. Matt is roughly eleven foot thirty when he slouches. Suddenly, this poor, beleaguered blonde bimbo found a creature best known for shouting “Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum” rising in the direction of her chest.

Strangely, this caused alarm.

She began to back away. “Miss, I just need to fix this.” JPG put a hand up behind her shoulder to block her retreat. Still unconvinced she moved towards me, whereupon I did the same. She was trapped.

Matt struck, and deftly drew an apostrophe. A relieved sigh went up from the conspirators, and Matt sat back down as we released her.

“Thank you, miss. I just needed to correct your sign.”
“Huh?” The deer-in-the-headlights effect remained in place.
“Your sign was incorrect. It had the possessive form of ‘it’ instead of the contraction. I don’t think they’d appreciate it if you showed up at college and didn’t know the difference.”
“Oh, um, the kitchen staff… they made… can I go now?”

We finished breakfast, studiously not looking too closely at our food, just in case, and tipped reasonably generously, considering.

Amazingly, we were not banned from The Obligatory Cow Reference for forcibly spell-checking their waitress, but the staff for the next few days did keep a bit of extra distance unless strictly necessary.

*I’d give the proper name, but I’d really like Secret Location, CO to remain secret. Otherwise it’d just become civilization and Blogorado would fill up with assholes, and if I have to put up with assholes on my vacation, the scene will Not Be Pretty. Suffice it to say it’s like every other small western agricultural town, and local establishments sport various names like “The Jersey Heffer” or “Hoofs n’ Horns” or “The Golden Spur.”
**A bit, but not enough. We ran them out of quite a bit of food before their resupply.

Kang is in heat. For those of you who have not experienced the special joy and wonder epic pain in the ass that is a bitch in heat, especially if they are younger dogs that have never been bred, they get very swollen external genitalia, and they leak- blood and other fluids. Kang in full peak has had certain key bits compared to a rotting peach. We don’t want bitchgoo all over our carpet, so Kang has what we refer to as “bitch britches”, which is basically a diaper for dogs that can be used with sanitary pads marketed for humans. A visual illustration- click for big:

Last time we established a fairly good routine; britches on when she’s inside to prevent getting bitchgoo everywhere, britches come off when she’s out so she can clean herself up, and also because she will pee in them if she’s out. Or, at least she did once and I’m not eager to find out if that was enough to teach her not to.

Unfortunately, SOMEthing that we are both allergic to is blooming with extreme vigor right now, and I have a choice between being slow-witted and and out of it from the allergy attack or slow-witted and out of it from the pills that stave off the allergy attack. This morning I was operating on autopilot and unthinkingly turned her out in the yard to eat her breakfast while still wearing her britches. It only took me a few minutes to realize “OH GOD, Kang in heat, in yard, alone, still in her pants!” and I got to her as she was licking up the last of her food, completely unmolested. I asked her to come inside. She complied happily enough and soaked up the warm praise and petting- and promptly shot back outside as soon as I stepped aside a bit to let Kodos out to do his own business. She tossed me a big, smug, victory grin.

The one game that Kang enjoys above all else is being chased. She has come up with seemingly endless variations on ways to get us to want to chase her, from stealing tools to teasing the neighbor dogs; in the case of having stolen something, ignoring her does not work, as she will simply bury the item and the next time we’ll see, say, the hammer again is when she tries to tempt us with it at a random moment of yardwork. It’s just charming, in the sense that I have never been more tempted to turn her into a jacket lining than when she is forcing us into one of these little sessions. On our end, we’ve done all we can to convince her that under no circumstances are we willing to chase her, and her only chance at any sort of reward is to come to us, and if she has something, trade for it. This has been an uphill battle, but one we’ve mostly been winning lately.

I tried calling her as though nothing were unusual. The desperation in my voice not to have her soak her pants must have bled through, because she smirked at me and took off at that maddening trot calculated to be just ten percent faster than whatever pace I’m trying for. I tried again in what I hoped was my very best hey-let’s-party voice and wound up half-shouting:

“Oh come on sweetheart, please, please, baby girl, c’mon, I just want to take off your pants!”

She laughed at me and took off with a happy bounce in her step. Naturally. She did let me catch her a few minutes later- if you let your human get too frustrated too early on you won’t be able to reward desired behavior, after all.

So after several months she finally got one of us to play chase on her terms again, and now my neighbors may well think I’m a child molestor, but… at least her pants are dry.

I’m not going to beat around the bush. I hated high school. Sure, it had its moments, as does just about anything, but the introduction to the wonderful world of pointless bureaucracy, arbitrary regulations, and whim-driven policies, combined with five gallons of hormones per person didn’t exactly make it the shining pinnacle of my existence that it apparently was for some. And on a side note, I believed then and still do that if high school represents the best years of your life, you should probably do everyone else a favor and remove yourself from the gene pool as quickly as possible, and for preference in some hilarious manner suitable for a Darwin award. I didn’t struggle with my classes or any of that, but there were very few people around that I actually liked and found interesting. Combine that with the fact that I was already branded as slightly weird from grades K-8, had plenty of marksmanship medals on my ROTC uniform, and the most frequent phrase used in my English classes was “Go back to sleep, Stingray” after turning the correct answer to whatever was posed to me into a smart-ass remark*, none of my classmates were exactly gung-ho about boarding the ol’ Stingray’s Friend Train.

Needless to say, I did not miss my classmates after graduation. Of course there were one or two people I genuinely did like, blah blah blah, friends 4-eva, etc. I stayed in touch with them on my own. I didn’t get an invitation to the last reunion, and I’m rather pleased with that state of events.

So a week or two ago I was getting breakfast at the local hot-spot. While waiting on the crew to finish assembling my breakfast burrito, someone I went to school with walked through the door. There was really no question who she was, even though the last time I’d seen her was *coughgrumble* years ago. I also remembered just as quickly what a blithering idiot she was, and that she was more than a little vain at the time too. She looked at me for a few seconds while the gerbil tried to engage the wheel in her head.

“Say, aren’t you Stingray?”
I looked around to make sure she wasn’t talking to someone else. “Me? No, sorry miss. My name is Alan.”
“Are you sure? You look exactly like someone I went to school with!”
“Sorry, I went to school in Texas. I guess I can at least thank you for telling me I’ve got a long lost twin running around somewhere.”
“That’s weird, you really look like him.”
“Sorry to disappoint. Have a good one.” Fortunately, my burrito was ready at this point, and I was able to escape.

I should probably work up a better cover story in case they find me for the next reunion. Maybe I’ll call myself Michael Westen.

*That I could do so so reliably and answer so correctly at the same time unnerved one teacher so much that by the end of the year she had resumed smoking after being clear of the habit for five years. I found this out shortly after graduation from the teacher in the room next door.

In the comments on yesterday’s post about idiots who don’t leash their dogs, a few folks noted that it might be helpful to leash kids, too. Now let me just put forth that I have nothing against this notion in and of itself, at least not now that I’m an adult. Kids are often about as predictable as gas molecules, frequently move at around the same velocity, and require constant supervision. If your kids don’t heel off lead as well as they should, another training tool to help out would certainly be welcome, I imagine.

That said, it still helps to pay attention. When I was in the right age range to be a horrible little snot, running off and getting into trouble while my folks had me in public, my mom turned at one point to the use of a harness. Bouncing around in that excited state that only superheated gasses and small children can manage, I’d run up against the end of my tether, and mom would reel me back in. Other folks in the store were spared my attentions, and she didn’t have to stop what she was doing every five seconds to keep me out of trouble. Great system, right? Only, as it turns out, if I don’t have cover.

At one point in the local department store, mom was sorting through the patterns in the sewing section. Nearby were the usual clothes racks, circular affairs that when full of clothes had a hollow core that just screamed “Cool Fort Here!” to obnoxious little brats like myself. Since the rack was within leash range, I set about entertaining myself with all sorts of pretend battles and so forth. Just regular brat-in-a-fort stuff. Since all of this was right at the end of my leash, I was keeping reasonably steady pressure on the line, and this convinced my mom that everything was fine. Having noticed this pattern as she used the slack to keep track of me while distracted, I somehow formed a plan: I climbed around a little and wrapped my leash on the clothes rack to keep the line taut, and slipped out. Mom was still absorbed with the sewing patterns, so I set off on a unfettered romp around the store.

Some time later, the store owner (a gentleman my family had known for quite some time) noticed me bouncing around like a superball and led me back to mom. I wish I was old enough to either appreciate everything going on, or remember the expression on her face, or get a camera, or something, but I’m told she looked at me, looked at the leash, looked down the leash to where I had tied it off, and said something very unladylike that must be responsible for why I’m as warped today as I am.

There’s still a trace of shell-shock in her expression when she tells the story today, especially when she observes “I realized I was screwed when I was outsmarted by a two and a half year old.”

I consider myself lucky in my upbringing. Today, people consider it necessary to go to fancy places like BlackWater or Thunder Ranch to learn various ways to improve home security. Me, I learned everything I need to know by the time I was 12, and since LabRat is still shaking off her cold, y’all get to hear how it came about. Don’t worry, she’ll be healthy again sooner or later, it shouldn’t be more than a day or two more of my drivel.

When I was around eight or nine years old, the family’s pet tarantula was released back into the wild from which it came. I don’t remember the exact motivation for this, since no one in the house was afraid of spiders, and feeding it was a family entertainment event, but such is the storage capacity of a young mind. Fang was gone, and there was a gaping hole in the terrarium he/she/it had lived in. A few months later, our next door neighbor came by in a state of some concern.

“Hey, could one of you guys come take a look at this? There’s a snake cornered in my back yard, and I think it’s a rattler. I wanted to get some extra eyes on it before I kill it just in case it gets me or one of the dogs or something.” I recall even at the time thinking the expression betrayed a greater apprehension at the existence of snakes in general than the possibility of one being poisonous. Snakes were not his strong suit. I was told to simply stay put in our own back yard while Mom and Dad went to investigate. A few minutes later I heard their voices over the fence.

“Aww, it’s just a baby bull snake!” Mom exclaimed. “Don’t kill it! These are good!”
“The hell it is. It’s a snake, and it’s leaving here one way or the other.”
“Oh, fine. Chicken. Hey Stingray!” she called over the fence “Throw that little toy picnic basket over the fence, I’m gonna catch it!”

Moments later I saw our neighbor’s head appear above the fence line. He had climbed onto one of his junk cars so as to, ah, “not interfere.” Yeah, that’s why he was up there…

Anyway, a few minutes later we had a tiny bull snake not even a foot long in a plastic picnic basket. A brief discussion ensued, involving exclamations of “Oh cool!” and “Can we keep it?!” and without much arm twisting, my Mom and I convinced Dad that this hissing bundle of scaly cuteness should be the new pet in the terrarium. Me being of the age where Disney was still the preferred entertainment, the name “Little Sir Hiss,” was chosen after the snake in the animated version of “Robin Hood.” The snake didn’t respond when we called the name, and we didn’t expect the snake to play fetch, so everybody was happy with the arrangement.

Fast forward a few years. Little Sir Hiss was by no means little anymore. With a steady diet of mice (feeding was once again family entertainment, as well as a test of nerves for guests – “Go on, just hold it in by the tail, the snake will take care of the rest!”), Hiss had grown to well over three feet and a very respectable girth for a bull snake. His tank had been upgraded a time or two, and to keep his heat lamp at a good distance, my dad built a custom lid for it. Unfortunately, Hiss was apparently one of those quirks of nature who find the temperature their environment is supposed to be at on the cold side, and made a habit of climbing up into the lid to get closer to the bulb.

One day as feeding time was drawing near, I peeked into the cage to see how frisky the snake was. Not seeing scale nor tail, I leaned down and looked into his favorite hidey hole in the tank lid. Curiously, this was empty as well. I took this as generally Not A Good Sign.

Reporting in to my parents, we made a fair effort in searching the house. Under the sofa by the trombe wall, in the greenhouse, various places one might expect a heat-seeking pet to head for. Alas, nothing turned up. As we were reasonably sure the snake was still in the house, we simply sealed up any doors and windows he might be able to escape through, and figured he’d turn up. We were cautious about getting through doors quickly, and when folks came to the front door selling girl scout cookies or handing out fliers for the religion of the week or whatnot, we would step quickly through and shut the screen door behind us to conduct business on the porch.

Remember how I said this was all about home security? Well, as it turns out the only thing you need to do to make sure your house is never broken into is to casually mention “Let’s talk out here, the snake escaped and is loose in there somewhere” to a few people. In the week that snake was loose, I saw more faces go ashen, more knees begin to knock, and in one notable case, the pizza guy looked about half a second shy of actually wetting his pants.

“That’ll be $12.75.”
“Sure, let me just step out and get the door shut. Our snake is loose in there somewhere.”
“Snake?”
“Yeah, we’ve got a pet bull snake.”
“Pet?”
“Well he doesn’t do tricks or anything, but sometimes he’ll ride around on a neck or something.”
“Keep the snake inside. Definitely keep the snake inside. It didn’t get out just now did it?” He was backing up with every comment. If this didn’t wrap up soon, we might have been picking our pizza out of the grill of whatever hit him.
“No, he’s been missing a few days. We check when we go in or out to make sure he’s not — ”
“$12.75!”
“Um, ok. Here’s $15, keep the- ”
There was a twanging noise as his internal panic-spring finally let go and he ran back to his car. Shrugging, I went back inside. As I went through the entry way, I glanced over at where Mom habitually set her purse and keys when she came in. Perched atop her handbag, happy as I’ve ever seen a snake look, was Little Sir Hiss. He flicked his tongue at me in greeting, and I let him wrap around my arm before I took the pizza into the dining room.

We lived in a good neighborhood at the time, and LabRat and I still do (coincidentally the house where all this happened is two minutes walk from here), but I know now that if I ever need to beef up home security, you don’t need any fancy electronics, big guns, or vicious dogs. Just tape a simple handwritten sign to the doors:

“Remember to keep this shut so the snake doesn’t get out!”

I wish I could give you folks an mp3 of this, but thanks to the timing involved that just wasn’t possible. You’ll have to take my word that this is really how it went down.

Some months ago, due to reasons that I would love to bitch about but probably shouldn’t, I had to set up a laptop for one of my bosses with some business plan software on it. The easiest plan to get this done involved my name going into the software company’s computers instead of hers. Since then, I’ve gotten a little spam from them about their other products and services, but nothing major. Today, this changed. Today, they started trying to pimp their Business Plan Coaching service by phone. What is business plan coaching, you ask? Beats the hell out of me, but apparently it’s

“…to help you pursue your goals of business financing, show you how to develop a business plan that includes cash flow, pursue business growth by applying best practices to your plan, help you develop strategies for implementing your plan, hold you accountable to follow through and complete vital tasks, and to provide the experience and needed motivation to help you succeed!”

Among other things. Now I’ll be the last to begrudge anyone the chance to make a buck, but everything about this from the get go has seemed about half a step away from a headset and making sure the camera guy was following this. Today’s calls served only to reinforce this impression.

“Hello?”
“Hi! May I speak to Stingray?”
“Speaking.”
“My name is Heidi*, and I’m with {Personal Business Coaching}, do you have a few moments to talk about our services?”

After a bit of futher conversation, it was arranged that one of their Personal Coaches would call me back in half an hour to see if I was in need of Personal Coaching. If they had actually waited a full half hour instead of jumping the gun and calling ten minutes later, the rest of this might be a lot funnier, and accompanied by mp3. Oh well, can’t win ‘em all.

“Hi, may I speak to Stingray?”
“Speaking!”
“I’m Sarah**, a personal coach with {Personal Business Coaching}, and I’ve got a message that you may be interested in our service! May I ask how you heard of us? Did you download {software title}, or get our publication?”
“The software. Yeah, I needed a new business plan.”
“That’s great! A good business plan is always a good path forward. Is your company an existing business, or are you new to all this?”
“We’re existing, we’ve been around a couple years.”
“That’s great, and how are you doing? Are things going well? The economy has really been hammering small business owners.”
“Actually, we’re running a pretty good profit. Even with the economy, people still need porn*** when they’re bored and feeling down. It’s really a pretty stable vehicle, but you know how it is, there are always little gotchas and problems.”
“Um.. ok. So are you having any trouble with your business that we could help with?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I am having some trouble with staffing.”
“Oh? What kind of trouble?”
“Mostly in finding competent staff. I mean, the population of albinos already isn’t huge, and to find one willing to work on top of that… well, do you know what kind of time and effort that head hunting takes?”
“Well, no… what sort of…”
“And even if you do find an albino who’s willing to act, there are certain physical aspects to consider, and keeping track of them is a pretty big timesink.”
“Um..”
“I mean, have you seen the shape of the fists on some midgets? Let’s just say it’s tricky. There can be complications.”
“*click*”
“Hello? Miss?”

I guess I don’t need personal coaching after all.

*Really.
**Heidi sounded much more gullible fun.
***I tried to muffle/distort that a little for good measure.

First, a little bit of background biological trivia. There will not be a quiz later, but I promise it is relevant to the story.

Cats, unlike dogs, need to learn how to properly kill prey from another cat, which will almost certainly be their mother. While you can see puppies descended from generations of show-ring ancestors practicing their killing bite-and-shake on a soft toy just as a matter of natural play, cats need to learn this behavior specifically- the stalk, chase, and pounce are built-in instinct, but the mechanics of the actual kill are not. Cats are one of the few predators that makes any special effort to kill large prey before it settles down to a meal rather than merely hoping to impede or immobilize it; most of us are familiar with near-surgical bite to the back of the neck to sever the spinal cord, but fewer have watched and understood footage of a lion or leopard firmly clamped on a large ungulate’s throat; the cat is not trying to “go for the jugular”, which is actually quite difficult to do properly, but to cut off its trachea and suffocate it. Useful tactics for a short-winded but powerful ambush predator but less so for a high-stamina chase-and-slasher, these techniques are apparently sufficiently advanced that they require enough education of young that the more rudimentary final-kill skills have faded from the library of instinctual behavior. Suffice to say, a domestic cat born to non-hunting indoor parents will not know how to kill prey. Our Siamese, Zydeco, is one such cat- fantastic enthusiasm and stalk-and-pounce instincts, but no practical knowledge.

So it came to be last night that at some point well past a decent hour, Zydeco started up with his I-have-a-problem howl. Stingray and I were full of immediate dread- Zydeco’s range of potential problems is limited, and most often his problem turns out to be that he feels sick and is about to create a spectacular new carpet pattern. However, this time, he sounded oddly… muffled. We were still trying to figure out what in the seven hells was going on when it became apparent what his problem was: he had bolted into our bedroom carrying a mouse, which he didn’t know what to do with. Being a sociable and fairly clever cat, he’d brought his problem to us. Being very excited and very inexperienced, he promptly dropped and lost control of the mouse, which was now firmly OUR problem. A confused session of upending and shaking everything in the bedroom eventually failed to turn up a mouse, and we were thus forced to give up and go back to bed for some very uneasy rest. (The dogs, who were of the opinion that it was WAY past their bedtimes and certainly too late for this nonsense, refused to stir themselves for any of it.)

Fast forward to early this afternoon, and Stingray noticed that Zydeco seemed oddly interested in the fireplace. He loves the fireplace with all his heart and soul, but he’s not usually excited about it unless he sees someone loading wood in. Stingray correctly drew the conclusion that the mouse had found refuge somewhere inside the fireplace, and summoned me to get an appropriate capture device. After handing him a cardboard box (far too large) and a jug normally used for iced tea (opening far too narrow), Stingray settled on having me empty the ash bucket so he could use that. Eventually he applied his Leatherman to the task of disassembling the appropriate part of the fireplace insert, and the mouse made an immediate break for it. Zydeco, who had been ready for just this moment for the last ten minutes and possibly his entire life, immediately caught it and attempted to race off with it. Stingray, figuring he was clearly just going to drop it unharmed again, lunged for the cat and mouse and succeeded in dumping the rest of the ashes over the cat’s head while the mouse escaped behind the entertainment center. Zydeco’s mews of excitement turned into furious yowls of outrage. We, and the newly interested Kang, regrouped in front of the TV, bringing the pack up to four actively involved members with three species represented.

Eventually, we succeeded in harrying the mouse out from behind the TV and shelving, where it made a bold strike for the dining room with Kang in hot pursuit and the rest of us in slightly cooler pursuit. She probably would have caught it then and there if the entryway in between hadn’t been tile- she nearly spun out making the turn, and had to get her hind legs back under control. As it was, she succeeded in pinning it by the bookshelves in the dining room… and, because it was small enough to completely disappear beneath her big snowshoe paw, she became confused about where it had gone and managed to let it go in the process of figuring that out. The mouse found itself a new refuge under another set of shelves in the office, which fortunately for us has enough space underneath it to look under- and, with the help of tools, reach under. Kang and Zydeco covered each end while Stingray covered the middle. Some sorting-out followed while we determined where the mouse was and Zydeco established that no, Kang was NOT to muscle in on his position. (She apologized with lowered ears and a noselick, which he seemed to accept.) I prevented Kang from solving the problem by upending the bookshelf while we pondered how to proceed.

After a period that consisted mostly of cursing and furred members of the family circling like sharks, and also involved the amputation of the mouse’s tail at one point when Stingray was a fraction of a second too slow with the bucket, it was concluded that the dedicated household predators had failed and human tool use was necessary. After a fruitless search for Stingray’s air pistol, which we apparently have the box for but not the device itself, a certain amount of overkill was applied in the form of his air rifle. (It was less overkill than using the crossbow would have been, mind you.) While Kang and Zydeco enthusiastically covered for Stingray’s absence while he fetched the pellets, they were less enthusiastic about his return to the proceedings – alpha pack mate or not. Eventually he was able to get the muzzle threaded between wildly dancing paws of various sizes and line up a shot. Confirming a hit, he raked the mostly-dead mouse out from under the shelf with a fireplace poker, and stood triumphant, rifle and poker in hand while I put a plastic bucket over it to keep the animals off.

“HAH! BROKE INTO THE WRONG GOD DAMN REC ROOM DIDN’T YA?!*”

“Is it dead?”

“It was breathing.”

“What do we do with it?”

“Plastic bag?”

“It sounds like it’s gotten up again. We’ll need to figure out more than that.”

“What if we AAAAHHH NOOOOO ZYDECO NOT THE BUCKET GAH DAMMIT”

Zydeco, not to be denied his prize by mere humans at this late stage in the game, had used his paw to flip the bucket back over, grab the mouse, and bolt. Naturally, he dropped it again, where it attempted a very aborted scurry until Kang swooped in to intercept the dropped pass. At that point the question of the mouse’s final dispatch became moot; Kang definitely is not confused about how to kill prey. Since she surrendered it reasonably willingly, she was given several of the most prized sorts of dog cookies all at once while the plastic-bag plan was put into action. Zydeco was given a bit of cheese to mollify him while cleanup wrapped up.

If you’re wondering where Kodos was in all this, he was waiting by the back door for someone to notice him and let him out so he could go lie down in the cool breeze- he was almost completely distinterested in the whole affair, once he figured out what we were doing. While Akitas are supposed to be a hunting-and-guarding breed, our two have apparently split the tasks between them.

Matt and Steve have achieved cooperative three-species hunting parties in the form of raptors and dogs. While we may now technically claim the same honor, I somehow doubt that dog-and-Siamese hunting is going to catch on.

*Stingray has been waiting for ages to get a chance to use this line. Geek points for you if you recognize the source.

Rumors of our slipped sanity leading to experiments with laser guided radioactive mutant monkeys are slightly exaggerated.

As LabRat mentioned in comments for yesterday, nothing particularly traumatic in and of itself happened, save one thing. Our tattoo artist went batshit and skipped the state. I don’t know all the details, and I don’t want to repeat things that may not be accurate, but what is known is that he walked off with a good size chunk of customer deposit money and left for what he apparently considers greener pastures. We were fortunate in that our long relationship with the shop meant that we didn’t have a deposit down, and Manny, the owner of Custom Tattoo was stand-up about the whole situation, preferring to break the news in person. After spending three or four years with Mark as our artist, with at least 60 hours of work between LabRat and I, this needless to say came as a bit of a shock. As Manny put it, it’s a kick in the dick. We suddenly feel like a neurotic person must when trying to pick out a new therapist. Again, we’re fortunate in that we already know both Manny and the other artist, Jason, to be highly skilled artists, so we didn’t have to look far to find someone to finish LabRat’s leg. Really, the worst part (to us) is just simply that he won’t be there anymore. Any time someone’s sense of humor and misanthropic outlook line up so neatly with our own, it sucks to have something like this happen, especially something this odd and out of character.

Moving on before this turns into a total drama laden tear fest, there is good news from the day as well. I mentioned that it looks like at least three more people are joining the pre-Obamaban gun rush, and three more armed citizens is always worth celebrating.

Some time back, a friend of mine started asking a few questions about firearms since he knew I was interested in the subject. His office wasn’t located in the most sterling part of Albuquerque (and his new office still isn’t exactly in a crime-free zone). We bantered back and forth a bit on the subject, and I answered his questions as they came up, and in general it was a pretty soft sell. He was one of those folks who support gun rights, but just wasn’t particularly interested in joining as a vested party. Yesterday, he and his wife joined us for a trip through a very well pecked over gun shop. We were along (aside from not turning away excuses to go to the gun store) to serve as someone with a bit of a clue to help out – sort of a walking bullshit detector and sounding board. The staff at Ron Peterson’s aren’t normally of the type to pull the oft-spotted “Whatchoo need h’yar is this Thunderblast 9000! Now don’t you mind that your hand cramped just from picking it up, you’ll only need to wave it around a’fore any bad guys crap themselves runnin!” schtick, and this visit was no exception, so we spent more time in the good info-dump capacity than in the bad.

The surprising part though was the unexpected third person tagging along. I’ve mentioned in the past that one of (well, more than one honestly) of my bosses have what I will euphemistically refer to as “leftward leanings.” Y’know. Of the Prius driving sort. I had a laptop for her for some work related stuff. She teased me by suggesting we meet at the Apple Store for the hand-off, so I countered back with an offer of the gun store since my day was full anyway, and promised that the bitter clingers wouldn’t give her any trouble. I figured we’d wind up with some neutral territory, but straight out of left field came her reply that not only would the gun store be fine, but by the way at some point maybe you could give me some advice on buying a gun.

LabRat swears my expression was priceless. I wouldn’t know, since I was too busy trying to keep dust bunnies from rolling into my mouth off the floor from where my jaw dropped.

So, lather, rinse, repeat. She amazingly wasn’t aware of Obama’s record on liberty restriction (or at least this aspect of it), but took it in stride, asked intelligent questions, and had two specific purposes (home defense, as she lives alone quite a way out in the boondocks, and the possibility of having to put a sheep, horse, or goat down in an emergency) in mind to make sorting through everything easier.

My friend and his wife, I know are going to buy something. I know this because his wife told me “Oh, I know how he gets. It was like this with his cigars and camera stuff. Pretty soon the house will be filled with every laser, light, holster, and other gadget and we’ll have two or three dozen guns and he’ll be asking you about a full-size safe.” I think that’s a good sign. As for my boss, I wouldn’t say she’s absolutely a sure thing, but I’ll note she certainly did like the Springfield XD she was checking out…

Oh, and whatever assholes on the road were responsible for the drive from Albuquerque to Santa Fe taking two fucking hours can choke on rancid whale blubber and water ski at Seal Island. Albuquerque to Santa Fe is normally about a half hour to 45 minutes, and those pricks kept me from getting to the homebrew store!

Just about everybody has heard the old saw that tradgedy plus time equals comedy. From the appearance of the Titanic in “Ghostbusters 2″ to various Hindenburg jokes, this pattern plays out again and again. Some of you all may remember that a few months back, we took Kang to her first dog show. LabRat noted at the time that her take on the event was somewhat different from mine. Well, time and the fact that there is another show looming in her immediate future have given me the urge to look back and remember just what happened that weekend in May.

The entire ordeal started out on shaky ground. When LabRat first got the invitation to the show, the timing was less than convenient right out the gate. In a best-case scenario, we would’ve driven to Albuquerque with Kang on a Friday to drop her off, driven back on Sunday to pick her up, and then driven right back on Monday for the tattoo appointment I had already scheduled a month or so in advance. With an even hundred miles from Los Alamos to Albuquerque as the redneck drives, this six hundred mile plan did not seem terribly appealing.

After a bit of debate, organizing, cajoling and general acts of juggling, we wound up with a reasonable plan. We would drive down on Friday, drop Kang off with her breeder for showing, and then spend a leisurely weekend in the Big City, tending to our myriad of standing errands to run whenever we’re someplace with more than a half dozen or so retail stores. With fingers crossed, we called Mark in hopes of moving my tattoo from Monday to either Friday afternoon or Saturday. While the show would be a trifle inconvenient and certainly a tad expensive what with the hotel room, it seemed do-able at least.

In retrospect, given Murphy’s residence in this house despite our best efforts to evict the bastard, that should have been a warning sign that all hell was about to break loose.

The Friday in question eventually rolled around. With the schedule calling for Kang to be on-site and ready to go shortly after noon, this left us with considerably less time than we would have prefered in the morning to attend to all last minute details and arrangements. Kodos had to be dropped with my parents for the weekend, LabRat’s habit of not packing until the jet is taxiing down the runway, as it were, and my general aversion to mornings (which for the purposes of this post, I will blame on LabRat, as before I met her rising at 5am was reasonably common for me), and all the last minute “what will we need for the show?” factors had to be accounted for. Before this morning, I was led to believe that Kang would be washed at the show grounds, as they would presumably have better equipment to handle the operation, and she would need Proper Grooming, whatever the hell that was, before she went into the ring anyway. Instead, while in the midst of gathering my last items before mistakenly believeing myself ready to leave, LabRat marched a confused looking Kang up to me and wanted to know when I was going to wash her this morning.

Having only minimal coffee in my system at that point, I made my first mistake of the weekend, one which I would sadly repeat as time went on. I froze in confusion.

“What? She’s getting a bath down there, remember?”
“Yeah, but I just went over the schedule and she’ll need more time to dry and if we get that out of the way here we can –” She went on like this. I relented.

Bathing the dogs here is a tricky proposition at best. With one well over 100lbs, and the other just shy of same, control becomes something of an issue. As such, it winds up considerably easier to simply coax/drag/shove/bait the dog into the shower stall, and climb in with it to perform the scrubdown. I’m sure your own mind can fill in the details of a grown man and a nervous large dog in a shower stall attempting to engage in vigorous acts of scrubbing. There was much howling involved and some disturbing amounts of licking the shower door. I am pleased to note that I had no part in the licking of the shower door.

With Kang’s shower done, and my second shower just begining so I could remove the 20lbs of loose fur she shed (which through one of the few bright spots of luck for the weekend did not clog the drain), we were only running slightly behind schedule. We packed up the dogs and our luggage and the assorted support gear we deemed necessary for Kang into the truck and made for my parent’s house to drop of Kodos. A short ride, and one the dogs have made many times, this was uneventful. Once we reached the highway, however, things changed.

It should be noted at this point that, despite my best efforts, Kang is a daddy’s girl. When we first went to pick her up from the breeder at the tender age of eight weeks, it was love at first sight for her. While the breeder dealt with another couple who happened to be picking their puppy up the same day and were on their way out, we were asked to simply have a seat and enjoy the puppies. Puppies! Fuzzy! Cute! Cuddly! Et cetera! Plopping myself down on the floor to pet the little balls of fluff, the one that was to be Kang trundled over to me and gave me a vigorous sniffing. She then stomped through my lap, leaving of course no delicate bits un-squished, marched a few feet away, peed on the floor, and then marched back to curl up and fall asleep in my lap. Aside from the location where she pees, surprisingly little has changed since. Anyway, back to the highway.

On the short drives to my parent’s house, or to the vet, Kang had traditionally been happy to look out the windows, or annoy Kodos, or occasionally stick her head up toward the front seat for a quick ear scritch. For longer rides, she apparently gets nervous. When nervous, she seems to want reassurance from daddy. Thus, for the next two hours, I learned to pilot a full-size pickup with dangerously insufficient caffeine in my system through the New Mexico highways and interstates with this head planted firmly on my shoulder, breathing wetly into my ear. At least I probably blended in with the rest of the drunks finally going home.

Arriving in Albuquerque, we had left time for lunch. This went surprisingly smoothly, despite the gigantic fuzzy mooch in the back seat. We called Mark to see about the tattoo reschedule, and for the most part the biggest worries of the weekend were the early morning and the unexpected bath. Then we tried to get Kang to the show, and that is where engines 2, 3, and 4 caught fire, the controls locked, fuel pressure went out, the bombadier puked all over and all the guns jammed. Metaphorically speaking of cousre.

After three or four passes on one of Albuquerque’s busier streets attempting to find the lone open gate to the appropriate area of the state fair grounds, we finally found a way in. We promptly blew our other lone piece of luck for the weekend by getting past the gatekeeper without paying a parking fee on the grounds that we were simply dropping the dog off to be shown, and wouldn’t be staying. We pulled in to an area reasonably near where the show was supposedly being held, and tried to call the breeder. Meanwhile, our lunch stop not having bathroom facilities easy to access, or of general maintenance above “might not explode,” my bladder was threatening dire consequences if I didn’t find at the very least a secluded shrubbery. Leaving the phone and dog in LabRat’s care, I set off to the clearly labled facilities in plain view from the parking lot. As it turned out, those facilities had not been unlocked since shortly after the fairgrounds were first built. With a few choice phrases directed at the door locks, I went in search of other suitable facilities.

Twenty minutes of marching through the mid-90-degree heat and relatively high humidity of Albuquerque in May, the only option availible was a vacant horse stall. After a series of looks from my neighbor, which I presume translated from horse into “Dude, aren’t you done yet?” I made my way back to the truck to find that LabRat had still not managed to reach the breeder. Taking Kang from her, she went in search of anybody who could point us in the right direction. At this point, regardless of the impact to the morning’s schedule, I was glad we had bathed her at home, since showtime was looming a fair bit closer than we had originally planned. In my head, by this point in the day, Kang would have been well off with the breeder, we would have checked into the hotel, and the leisurely weekend would be well underway, checking out various interesting looking shops we never had time to stop into before and the like. Eventually, LabRat came back into sight, moving at a fairly brisk pace compared to normal. Having finally found the breeder’s area, she reported, we threw all our stuff small enough to fit into the cab of the truck, crossed our fingers about the dog’s crate (the Albuquerque fairgrounds are not in the low-crime section of town) and went to make the handoff.

At this point, the fourth engine burst into flame, half the starboard wing fell off, the ball-turret gunner went plummeting off towards the green earth below, the radio went out, and the last transmission from friendly territory involved phrases like “on fire” and “court-martial.” Metaphorically speaking, of course.

“Oh, great! You’re finally here!” the breeder announced. “Sorry, my phone was in the glove-box in the car. Been kinda busy here. Look, the show is in about an hour and a half, which will be just enough time to– oh no! You didn’t groom her?!”
“We gave her a bath before we lef–”
“Throw her — what’s her name again?”
“Ka–”
“Throw her up on that table and get her groomed. There are tools on the other table where they’re grooming Uzi right now. Don’t get too close to her head, she’s cranky.”
“Uz- ?”
“I’ve got to run talk to the judge for a minute and get some other details squared away. You don’t mind and have time for this, right?” I repeated my earlier mistake and hesitated, confused.
“Um, I gue-”
“Great. Do you know how to groom.” It was not a question.
“What?”
“Oh. Frickin’ great. Ok, get her on the table and just start brushing her real good. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

We got Kang up on the table in question, and not knowing what else to do, set about our usual procedure for getting loose hair and undercoat off her. Uzi’s crankiness (and yes, the other akita was named Uzi, and yes, after the gun) had been fortunately overstated, and amounted to giving me a friendly lick as I moved past. LabRat held Kang’s collar and I worked her over with an undercoat rake and shedding blade I found nearby. The breeder came back into view, moving at full steam.

“What are you doing!? I said start grooming her! It’s nearly show time!”
“I –”
“Here, get this noose over her head so we can control her.”
“She–”
“Raise that post to keep her head in the right spot.”
“It –”
“Twist the other knob.”
“Ok.”
“We’ll start with her nails. She’s fidgety, so control her head. Just put her in a headlock.”
“Right.”
At this point, Kang felt it prudent to become involved in the process.
“ARRRRooooWWWOOoooOWWWOWOOOO!”
“Aw, you’re a fidgeter aren’tcha! Hold her head tighter.”
“Right.” I clamped down on my headlock.
“ARRROOOWWAHAHAAAARROOOOOAHHHH AHHHH AHHHH!!!”
“Tighter!”
“Right.”
“ARRROOOOOOOAAAAOOOOOOHHHOOOOOWWWWWWOOOOOoooOooOOOohwwwaaaO”
“Too tight. You’re hurting her.”
“Oooh-kay.” I eased off the headlock. Kang instantly transformed into a land-based Marlin. At least this is the closest description I can muster for the transformation in to “wildly-bucking and howling fur-beast.”
“Ok, put your fingers under her chin like this – ” she jammed two fingers under my chin for demonstration – “and push up like this” – which she also demonstrated on me. “That’ll control her head without making her afraid you’ll choke her.”
“And who’s idea was the choking?”
“Huh? Just push up.”
“Right.”

“AROOOMMPFFOOOOPMMMMMOOOOO!”
“Harder!”
“Right!”
“AROOOOMMMMMMPPFFFFOOMMMFPFF!”
“HARDER!”
“RIGHT!”
“ARRROMMMMFFOOOOOOOOFFFMMMMMOOOOOOO!”
“Too hard!”
“But you said –”
“You’re pushing too hard, it’s scaring her!”
“You just told me to-”
“You’re a crybaby, aren’t you!” She bonked Kang on the nose. Kang gave me a confused look. I returned it. “Ok, her nails are done. You can do her coat, right?”
“Huh?” I began to wonder why she was turning to me for all this, while LabRat hovered nearby.
“Oh, God. Ok. Take this,” she handed me a collection of brushes, “this,” a squirt bottle filled with something, “these,” more squirt bottles, “and this” a shop-vac set to blow, “and {perform a miracle}. Got it?” I’d offer a more detailed account of what she actually said in place of “perform a miracle,” but really, that’s about all I got out of her instructions.
“Well, I — ” she flipped the shop-vac to high.
“I’ll be over here working on Uzi, so I can walk you through it from there!” she yelled over the noise. Unfortunately, with the noise, all I heard was “I’ll…. work…. uzi…you…there!” I was unsure if I should take that as a threat, not having yet confirmed that the dog’s name was Uzi.

From there, through a series of interpretive dances, wild hand gestures, and a growing cloud of removed fur, Kang was Groomed. Kang did not like being Groomed. The only thing louder than the shop vac were Kang’s howls of disapproval and torment. Judging from the noises coming from this previously 99% quiet creature, it would be quite reasonable to conclude we were performing surgery sans anesthesia. The shop vac howled. Kang howled louder. I choked and sputtered as the cloud of fur reached densities high enough to spark fears in the back of my mind that gravity would take over and the cloud would condense and reach the point necessary to start a fusion reaction. My shirt was no longer blue, and the stubble I had foolishly failed to shave earlier in the morning was gathering such quantities of airborn fuzz that I’m told I took on a rather akita-like appearance myself, only with my mouth forming much more clear profanity, thankfully for bystanders drowned out by the shop-vac.

Forty seven hours later, the grooming was complete. Kang was resplendant in her show coat, fluffed to a volume I did not believe she was capable of, and looking every bit the (rather shocked and confused) ring queen. From there, we discovere (as LabRat mentioned in the original post), that Kang expected us to save her from this bizarre world of chaos and confusion we had thrust her into whenever she could see us. I sympathized, and was hoping someone would save us. We were thus banished from watching her compete. Hovering around, trying to keep a layer of spectators thick enough to keep her from noticing us, but thin enough to have some idea if we were even looking at our dog, the show progressed. Unaccustomed to being handled in such a manner, Kang dug her heels in and gave donkeys a good run for the title of “Most Stubborn.” Then, waving her front paw wildly about in the most clear demonstration of “DO NOT WANT” I have ever witnessed, she punched the judge in the face. The judge, a burly woman, took it in stride, fortunately. We later learned that she was a former U.S. Marine, which explained a lot.

In the midst of trying to watch the show, my accursed phone rang. The tattoo shop was calling about the reschedule. To make things worse, rather than hearing Mark as I expected, I heard a female voice. Apparently the shop had finally found some help to run the counter, adding just that extra dash of confusion for good measure. In keeping with our luck for the day, the only session possible other than the original as scheduled, was that very evening at 7pm. And as LabRat mentioned in the other post, we had for some reason agreed to have dinner with the local Akita club after the show. At 6pm.

Finally, the show wrapped up. I was more than a little concerned about the timing issues at this point. The last time we had been to our breeder’s house, where Kang would be spending the weekend, it was in a location best described as “Way The Fuck Out There,” at least 30 minutes each way, and it was already 5:20. Amazingly, she had moved to a location only slightly The Fuck Out There, and we were able to pack up dogs and equipment and make it from the middle of Albuquerque to the north end of town in reasonable time. Of course, when we got there, we discovered that Kang had picked up a case of worms from one of her kills. Nothing quite like marching your dog to the expert’s turf and noticing a white wriggler sticking out of her butt after a day like that to make you look like a competent owner, I can tell you that.

With dinner scheduled back near the fairgrounds for 6pm, we were a trifle behind schedule at this point. I will save the lurid description of the drive from breeder’s to restaraunt that I suspect LabRat would qualify as “death defying” and “bone chilling” because such claims are obvious hyperbole and have little in common with how the drive actually went. I will say that the engineers at Dodge did a hell of a job, because a full size pickup isn’t normally a vehicle folks consider capable of maneuvering well at 90mph through moderate to heavy traffic. Good acceleration too.

As we arrived at the eatery, it became obvious that we were a very distinct minority in considering punctuality that important. The judge Kang punched was there (once a Marine, always a Marine), and one other couple. The couple promptly began condescending to us, while the Marine was friendly to LabRat. Unfortunately, I missed a key section of conversation whilst washing up (buttworms before dinner? No thanks), and so some of the Marine’s conversation seemed a tad down her nose at us as well.

Finally, after a dinner in which I could not have understood less, we made it to the tattoo shop. I had never been so glad to be in agonizing pain before in my life. Mark was working over a section of my ribs which wasn’t technically the worst spot possible as far as pain generation, but was very high on the list. Throughout relating the day to Mark and the other artists, I think it tells all that needs saying that they all commented that nobody had sat that still for that much in that section in their memory. It was just that big an improvement over the rest of the day.

Finally, the day was over. Wondering if our reservation would still be good, we trekked off to the hotel. As we pulled into the parking lot, our luck held. The lot was full of school buses. A girl’s softball team was in town for whatever it is they do, and they had chosen the very same hotel we were in. And yes, they were on the same floor as us. In the next room on either side.

If you don’t hear back from us after this next show, I think you can safely deduce what happened. Hopefully the spot on “America’s Most Wanted” will be flattering.